


Gyda the Dragonslayer

by Cerch



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Mythology, BAMF Women, Curses, Dragons, F/F, Sámi Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 19:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12019026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerch/pseuds/Cerch
Summary: I see blood running under the roofs of gold. I hear the drum of a noaidi in the darkness of the long night. The fire will wake in the mountains and it will not die – for that will be a lie.The daughters live, follow a prophecy to the wild north, and fall in love.





	1. In the beginning there is a girl

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this rather accidentally last spring and finally managed to finish it yesterday. But I felt like all the dead daughters needed a fix it and somehow it turned into this. I hope someone ends up enjoying it! Sass, thanks for the cheering once again <3
> 
> A note on the Norse: The descriptions are largely based on the show canon, and are not necessarily historically accurate.
> 
> völva = witch/shaman
> 
> I mention here briefly a legend that aurora is caused by light of Valkyries´ chainmail; whether this was a true belief of the Vikings is unclear. The corresponding Sámi legends are real.
> 
> A note on the Sámi: The Sámi are the only indigenous people of Europe, habiting the area of Sápmi, more commonly known as Lapland. They speak several different dialects that are not necessarily mutually intelligible. No offence is meant by any descriptions in this story, which I expect are not historically accurate as there is little known of the Sami from this early period; the Viking era would have been before they became reindeer herders, instead living as hunter gatherers. Due to the assimilation policies and the work of Christianity little is known even of the later beliefs and traditions of the Sámi, and what small things doubtlessly survive amongst them I have no knowledge of. Instead my knowledge relies heavily on picking grains of truth from often highly racist descriptions from an era when Christianity had already made its way in. The description of the otherworld is almost completely made up.
> 
> A few words of Sámi make appearances in this story:  
> Noaidi (north sami) = shaman (a man)  
> Siedi (north sami) = an idol, often natural and distinctive stone, that was believed to be habited by a spirit, and that offerings were made to. The conduct demanded around a siedi depended on the spirit habiting it.  
> Passevare lodde (as spelled in The Religion Of The Samek by Rafael Karsten. After two years I still remember how racist this book was…) = something along the lines of “sacred-mountain/otherworld bird”, essentially a bird spirit that could be used to find passevare olmai or sometimes attack enemy.  
> Passevare guelle (Karsten) = A fish spirit that would guard the shaman and their body.  
> Passevare olmai (Karsten) = A higher, human (or human-like) spirit

In the beginning, on the fields of a tiny farm she is only Gyda who gets distracted by yellow butterflies and whose nails are always dirty.

In the town she is the friend of Hilda, who is the daughter of the cobbler. Sometimes she is “Hey you!”. Sometimes they say, “Your mother is the famous shieldmaiden Lagertha?” and then they look away and say: “Only a farmer now, such waste!” Like Gyda can’t hear or understand. She wants to hiss at them that there is no shame in being a farmer.

Björn wants to be sail off to raids with their father. Gyda wants to sing while working the fields with the ground solid under her bare feet while Odin’s birds watch her from the trees. Most of all she doesn’t want to see, or worse, to be seen.

Then her father starts speaking about raids to faraway lands, and she is Gyda, the daughter of a troublemaker. _You girl learn to hold your tongue unlike your witless father._ Gyda has known how to hold her tongue since she learned to listen.

First his father sails away once, then twice. _Gyda Ragnarsdóttir, your father is a great man! Has he taught you how to fight? No,_ she says, but inside her head she thinks: _But my mother has taught me where to stab a man._

_Ragnarsdóttir. Your father._

She likes the monk. She likes the shiny brooches and armbands as well, but out of the things her father brings back she likes the monk the best. She teaches him the word for land, axe, bread – for a god, and slowly he starts telling her stories, halting at first, from strange lands and customs that she absorbs and treasures like gold.

When her mother leaves with her father the monk stays and is kind, though weirdly incapable of simple tasks. Gyda has to show him how to hunt the eel, because Björn is too busy practicing his axe. Björn doesn’t get any dinner that night; next day there are three pairs of purple hands picking blueberries.

xxx

Thyri Siggysdóttir, daughter of the Earl, sits with the young girls of the village and tells them that the only power they will have is through a man. _I will marry a strong warrior_ , she says. _And give him many sons, who will do us honour and carry me to Valhalla with them._

_It doesn’t work like that,_ Gyda wants to say but she is a quiet child and as she grows older she notices the whiteness of Thyri’s fingers clutching her dress.

At her wedding Thyri’s face is ashen and her red rimmed eyes roam across the room, pleading at someone to stop it all. Nobody does. _You are your own best protector,_ Lagertha had said when she gave Gyda a knife. After a month of Thyri’s red eyes and badly hidden bruises Gyda understands that nobody has given Thyri one.

On twelve nights Gyda slips out of her bed and goes to the forest and finds the things she needs. On the fourteenth day she presses a little bag of herbs into Thyri’s hands and says, “They will bring sleep, fast and heavy.”

How Thyri chooses to use them is no concern of hers, but the bruises disappear, as does the pained bend in her step.

xxx

Before the plague comes for Gyda she has time to see Thyri’s husband take ill, while Thyri washes her hands out of white powder every night. 

When the fever leaves Gyda many things have changed; she is a daughter of an Earl – though he sails off all the same, taking Björn with him. And Thyri – Thyri is a widow with straight spine and newly blazing eyes.

xxx

_“_ Our father disrespects our mother _”,_ Björn says, helping Gyda to set the wool for spinning.

The spindle falls, clatters to floor. _A legendary romance_ , Hilda the cobbler’s daughter had called them. The famous Lagertha swept off her feet by a poor farmer turned hero.

The ship arrives shrouded in mist, rising from the sea like a serpent, carrying a goddess of doom with fire in her hair and Gyda’s half-brother in her belly. Gyda knows all this as the spindle falls, but she doesn’t know that Aslaug’s smile is kind while she offers them a chance to stay.

_I will not ask you to leave your father._ Björn takes Gyda’s hand as they turn their backs to Kattegat.

xxx

“Will you teach me to become a famous shieldmaiden like you?”  Gyda hears Thyri asking her mother.

 She can’t see her from behind the corner she is standing, but she knows her mother’s eyes to be as sharp as a hawk’s.

“I can teach you how to fight.”

xxx

Thyri stays with them, helps them with their work and practices her axe. Gyda watches, only ever watches, as Thyri trains. She is beautiful, like a view from a cliff where it is so easy to slip and fall.

_Will you not train with me, Gyda?_ she asks, once, twice and thrice.

_No.No. No._

_Gyda the Gentle,_ Björn calls her, but Gyda is no gentler than her brothers whose hands were covered in blood before they even emerged from their mothers’ wombs.

xxx

“My destiny is in your father’s ships,” Thyri tells Gyda as she leaves and kisses her cheek.

Gyda knows it’s not. “Maybe for now,” she says. “May the gods watch over you.”

xxx

“I want to raid again,” Björn blurts quickly and far too loudly, like he is afraid the words won’t come out or that he can never say them again if they are not heard now.

The knife skinning the rabbit doesn’t as much as hitch. “Then raid,” Lagertha says. “And it is time for Gyda to go to Kattegat as well.”

Gyda protests; Lagertha doesn’t relent.

xxx

They come to their father’s hall like strangers. The voices whisper. _Björn Ragnarsson_. _Gyda Ragnarsdóttir._ They have two new brothers, but their mother is not Lagertha, but a seeress who sees both too much and too little.

_You will slay a dragon,_ she tells her. Her father peers at her and doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know what to say.

It’s Thyri who calls _Gyda,_ smiling wide, and hugs her tight.

xxx

_I will raid with him,_ Björn says.

_Will you?_

_You could come._

_I won’t._

Björn goes.

So goes Thyri. _I will never be weak again._

She doesn’t listen when Gyda tells her that she was never weak in the first place.

xxx

Ubbe is mostly a nice and polite child. Gyda gives him a small axe and teaches him to chop branches. Aslaug watches. Though Hvitserk is only a babe in Asalug’s arms Gyda can see the army marching behind them both.

And Gyda, Gyda is the sister of Ragnar’s sons. Forgotten by all but the seeress who watches her.

_Let me come home to you, mother._

_I am not going home either._

xxx

“I want to build farms _,_ ” Ragnar says.

“They would burn,” Gyda says. She knows they will.

Ragnar smirks at her, like he knows all the world’s secrets. “Perhaps at first.”

Gyda wonders if maybe her father’s eyes see further still than hers.

xxx

Her father won’t kill the child. Gyda sees the shadow of future deeds, forged in cruelty, and wonders if perhaps it would be better if he did. _Ivar the Boneless._ She hears it chanted amongst the beat of drums, amongst the screams. She shivers.


	2. After, there was witch

The twilight and chill of late summer night is starting to creep up outside as they gather around the fire. Björn sits next to her, his presence welcome relief, like she is finally allowed to let her guard down. Sigurd tugs the sleeve of her dress with his fat little baby fingers that he has yet to grow out off. The same roundness lingers on his cheeks as well, but his voice is insistent.

“Gytha, Gytha! Story!”

“Perhaps –“ But Athelstan, who is always eager to tell tales, is somewhere with her father. Björn nudges her with his elbow, and somewhat reluctantly she nods.

Sigurd determinedly climbs up to her lap. Ivar makes a small unhappy sound against Aslaug’s breast; Sigurd squeezes Gyda’s hand tightly, while Hvitserk hushes Ivar sharply.

Aslaug only stares at Ivar, stroking his hair. She has retreated into herself and her eyes no longer follow Gyda.

“Well,”Gyda starts, “Not so long ago, there was a warrior named Sigurd.” Aslaug’s eyes flicker to her, sharpen. “He was your mother’s father, and he slew many monsters and countless enemies. But the most famous tale is that of his fight with dragon Fafnir –“

When she finishes the tale there’s little more than embers left of the fire, and Sigurd has fallen asleep, head against her shoulder. It’s hard not to love a child who adores you with all their childish innocence, and Gyda feels that love as an ache that reaches the root of her bones.

Carefully, she adjusts her hold of Sigurd and stands. He is still so small, easy to carry; it’s hard to believe one day he will grow into a fierce warrior like Björn, but at least until then he is Gyda’s to protect as well.

Björn offers his arms, lifting his eyebrow questioningly, but Gyda shakes her head and carries the sleeping boy to his bed.

As she tugs the furs tightly around Sigurd and turns around she finds Asalug standing few paces behind her, by the doorway. She smiles at Gyda, but as she moves to step past Aslaug’s nails bite into her arm.

“You must go north,” Asalug says. “Or the fire will come. You must!”

xxx

 _North._ The north is vast. There are villages not much different from Kattegat, but there’s also endless wilderness and the Sámi who practice strange magicks, hunting and wandering across the northern plains.

No matter how hard she stares at the lines of her palms in the darkness she cannot see the path she is meant to take – her own fate has never been visible to her. She sighs and rises, lifting the cloak to her shoulders.

Gyda hesitates before stepping to the hut of the seer. She has never come here voluntarily, afraid he will reveal her or, even worse, claim her.

“She says I must go north,” she says, voice thin even in the perfect silence.

The völva, a dark, shapeless figure at the furthest corner, turns his head. “I see blood running under the roofs of gold. I hear the drum of a _noaidi_ in the darkness of the long night. The fire will wake in the mountains and it will not die – for that will be a lie.”

The hairs of her arm stand up and a chill creeps up along her spine. “How do I stop it?”

The wind chime behind her sings a single note that seems to linger forever in the confined space between them.

“I cannot see the end,” the völva says. Gyda knows better than to stay and ask for more.

xxx

“The völva has told me I must go to Uppsala,” Gyda says, and it is a truth, if not the truth.

The tips of Thyri’s dangling toes touch the water and throw it up into the air.

“Then I’ll come with you.”

Few droplets of sea water fall to Gyda’s face, cooling the heat that has rushed to her cheeks. Her heart flutters like the wings of a dragonfly.

xxx

The journey is long when made by aching feet tripping over uneven ground. Longer still are the nights where they curl against each other to keep the chill away and Gyda wishes she could curl closer still, that she had a permission to touch. She wishes she had the courage to ask for one.

In the shadows of the forest Gyda’s bow sings its deathsong gladly, bringing down birds, rabbits, and once a deer.

Thyri shakes her head as she sees the deer, taken down from two hundred paces with a single arrow. “Why have you never raided with us?”

Gyda carefully removes the arrow and inspects it for damage before putting it back into the quiver on her hip. “Perhaps I have no stomach for it.”

Thyri considers her for a moment.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Think what you will,” Gyda says with a measured shrug. It’s not a lie – she has no desire to see the shape of so many lives and their ends.

xxx

On the path going up and up under the watchful eyes of ancient pines a crow flies down to greet them. Cackling loudly it circles them once, twice, so close that Gyda can feel the beat of its wings on her face, before it disappears back

 _Odin’s bird._ It waits for them at the end of the path, at the gates of Uppsala, sitting on the shoulder of a völva, whose hair is dark and wild and whose eyes see all.

“You were expected and you have arrived.” The crow caws. The völva turns, bones dangling from her belt clattering, and says no more.

xxx

Gyda has been to Uppsala once, years ago. It was the year of great sacrifice, and drink and food had flown freely together with the blood. Now it’s quiet, barely breathing.

“What are we meant to do here?” Thyri wonders aloud. She is restless, eager to leave this place where the dead walk far too close to the living, and Gyda’s feet are itching too. _Run, run,_ _away to where nobody will know._

When Thyri turns there’s a shadow of blood across her chest and Gyda bites her lip so hard it bleeds real blood, instead of that of the future.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Gyda says, abrupt. The ache for companionship and support claws fiercely on her breast, but the fear drowns it out for a moment.

Thyri only laughs, and Gyda can force no more words out.

xxx

The völva carves runes to Gyda’s bow and arrows and one to the hilt of Thyri’s axe.

“For protection, for accuracy and for luck,” she says, humming as her knife works. “You could have learned, once, but your spells wait for you in the north. The raven will show you the way.” Then, sharply: “Do not lose these, you will need them.”

Gyda looks at Thyri, who looks back, a million questions in her eyes.

xxx

They stop at the bottom of the hill at crossroads. The raven sits at Gyda’s shoulder but she knows which way she needs to go.

“Are you a witch?” Thyri asks.

Gyda refuses to look at her. The road to the north is hardly a road, but a slim needle covered path between the shrubs, climbing over stones and roots. “You should go back to Kattegat.”

“Gyda!” She steps closer, waits for a moment before moving closer still and lifting a determined hand to Gyda’s chin, forcing her to look up. A strange shiver goes up her spine, half mindless panic, half lust.

The raven lets out a small, offended caw and takes flight, claws scratching Gyda’s shoulder. Gyda doesn’t care. _It’s a wonder_ , she thinks, _that she would touch a witch_.

Thyri’s eyes are the same deep brown than that of the animals of the forest, and the same wildness lives behind them. There’s a faint scar at the corner of her brow that Gyda has never noticed before and without thinking she lifts her hand to trace it.

“Gyda,” Thyri says again, but this time it’s a hushed whisper.

In Gyda’s dreams, that were ever just ordinary dreams, Thyri had kissed her like a storm coming from the sea kisses the coast – with all-consuming force. Here, under the trees of Uppsala, she kisses Gyda like she is afraid that something might break; delicate, hesitant, a touch of butterfly wings.

“I can see.” Saying the words is making them real; the world knows now and Gyda can lie and hide no more.

It takes a moment for Thyri to understand, but when she does, she kisses Gyda again, still soft, still sweet, and Gyda loves her so much it hurts.

xxx

The raven guides them north and towards the mountains.

At night they learn each other’s bodies under the clothes, hands wandering, mouths locked in sloppy kisses, their voices loud prayers filling the air over the crackling of fire.

Gyda learns that Thyri loves it when Gyda’s fingers move slowly inside her, when Gyda looks her into eye and tells her how much she loves her. She likes hearing Gyda say her name. Gyda loves that too, and she loves sitting on Thyri’s fingers when she kisses her, moving her hips and taking it all.

Sometimes, during the day, Thyri takes Gyda’s hand and tugs her into a kiss, and sometimes Gyda pushes Thyri against a tree – and when they continue their way they laugh at the way their legs shake under them even when they lean into each other.

xxx

At the side of a bright watered lake between two fjells, up where birches barely manage to twist up from the ground, stands a large stone. One side of it is straight, like cut with a huge knife, and the surface has been stained dark with blood that has dripped down to the ground, feeding the vegetation that has grown almost lush enough to cover the antlers positioned carefully against the stone.

Power is palpable in the air around it, almost physically there; like if Gyda would squint really hard she might be able to see it.

She has heard of the stones the Sámi worship. The traders tell stories of magical places and warn against causing offence. _A siedi._ She tugs Thyri’s hand and brings a finger to her lips; the stone whispers and she doesn’t think they should speak here.

In silence and from respectable distance they make their way around until the presence of the stone wanes, and the raven that had disappeared returns to her shoulder.

When she looks up a small man standing by a tree that is scarcely taller than him. His tunic is bright blue, lined with elaborately woven strips of cloth, his hair is dark, but his face lines, and power burns between his eyes.

“ _Noaidi,”_ Gyda whispers to Thyri, and grabs her arms before it can reach for the hilt of the axe.

The raven caws and takes flight, circling to the man.

Slowly Gyda lifts her arm in a greeting.

“Seeress,” the _noaidi_ says in their language, a bit haltingly, and pads closer, his face is tightly scrunched up. “Spirits tell me I teach you. Woman.”

He stops few paces away and considers them again. “You knew not to disturb the spirit. Good.”

Gyda knows a few words of the language of the Sámi, so she tries to wrap her tongue around the words she remembers. “Good health to you. We seek shelter.”

The _noaidi_ smiles, and Gyda is not sure if it’s entirely friendly. “And knowledge. You can stay in the village,” he says in their language and waves them to follow.

xxx

The village stand in a well-protected nook of forest, almost hidden from sight. It is formed by buildings with curving timber poles coming together into high, cone-shaped houses, and at the top the cones don’t come _together but leave a hole for the smoke of cooking fires to escape to the sky._

Gyda has heard that the Sámi villages move, buildings and all, but it’s hard to imagine the huge timber constructs taken down and moved with any kind of ease.

A respectful silence replaces the clangs and chatter as the _noaidi_ approaches, and curious dark eyes peer at them. The _noaidi_ exchanges a few words with a village elder, gesturing to them, and she nods thoughtfully and ushers them into one of the buildings where food is being cooked over the fire.

Gyda speaks only a few words of the Sámi language, Thyri scarcely more, and yet they find themselves welcomed, and, perhaps strangely, also included.

A child runs around in the small space showing their new pine cone toy proudly around, and without an ounce of hesitation stops by them as well. Gyda takes the toy to admire it, and as she does so she sees. She sees the boy, a young man, fishing on a lake. She sees him marry a girl with braids adorned with beautiful ribbons of red and blue. She sees an empty boat, floating down a river.

She gasps, the smoke of the fire stinging her eyes and lungs, and pushes the toy to the little boy who will drown, and tries to stumble discreetly to the door. As Thyri moves to follow she shakes her head sharply, and slinks out to the dark evening.

The air is blessedly cool. The deerskin covering the door mutes worst of the sound coming from inside, and the loudest thing in the silence is her erratically racing heart. She looks to the sky, to the same stars she sees from home, and then down to her shaking hands.

A hand comes down to rest on her shoulder, heavy and comforting. The fingers are old, wrinkly and knotty.

Gyda looks up to the face of Sáráhkká, the old woman, and her comforting and understanding smile.

“ _Regret,”_ Gyda tries in Sámi, but Sáráhkká tuts and takes Gyda’s hands into hers.

She says something – Gyda can make out the word “gift”. Her smile is warm and understanding, and Gyda summons a bit wobbly smile in return. She doesn’t know the word for a curse in Sámi.

xxx

 _You need to break a spell_ , the _noaidi_ tells Gyda. _You need a drum._

For days she treads across the fells and forests, alone as the _noaidi_ had insisted. The trees are starting to take on reddish twinge, and the nights are turning biting cold.

On the side of a fell she shoots a deer with a patchy coat, and carefully she skins him and cuts his antlers, and silently thanks the spirits of the land and nameless though they are to her in the solitude of the wilderness they feel familiar all the same.

On her way back, sun and stars as her guide, she cuts herself a strip of the bark of an alder tree.

The skin they stretch over a drum shell made from wood. The alder bark is ground down into a blood red paste.

“Paint,” says the _noaidi_ , and Gyda paints. She paints the sun and stars above, the glimmering aurora of the valkyries’ chainmail, the land of the living between, the land of spirits below. She paints skis and a boat for her soul to journey with. She paints a knife and a bow. She paints a bird – a raven – and a fish to guide her. She paints runes of protection.

When she finishes her hands look like they have been covered in blood. Thyri helps her to wash them in a stream so cold it’s a wonder the water has not turned to ice, then shrieks when Gyda touches her neck.

Lastly, Gyda carves the antler, so she can summon the beat out of the drum.

Outside the first snow of the winter starts to fall.

xxx

“Why did Odin send me here?” Gyda asks Thyri.

Above, the sky is ablaze. The _noaidi_ says it’s the blood of the spirits who continue bleeding in afterlife, but Sárhákka calls it a northern fairytale and tells them it’s a snow blown up by the tail of a running fox. Both had laughed when Gyda had said it was the light from the valkyries´ chainmails as they rode across the skies. It’s the only time Gyda sees the _noaidi_ laugh.

Thyri shrugs. “Because it was your fate to come here and learn.”

“But we have our own magic.”

“Perhaps it will not help against a dragon.”

It does no good to try and follow the minds of the gods, Gyda knows. In her mind she can hear her mother’s voice: _Trust in the gods, Gyda._ She takes Thyri’s hand and rests her head against her shoulder.

xxx

Like the völvas the _noaidi_ brews a tea out of small slices of mushroom that in larger amounts would kill a man.

“You have painted your guides. They will be waiting for you, and you need to find them before you go farther. First find your _passevare guelle,_ the fish that will guard you. The _passevare lodde,_ the bird, will take you to the high spirits, _passevare olmai,_ of the mountains, who can teach you how to break the curse and stop the fire from coming.”

Gyda’s hands, squeezing the edge of her drum, are slick with sweat. She is no proper _noaidi,_ no völva, just a girl who sometimes sees things against her will, and she wishes she was back on their farm hunting eel.

It’s just her and the _noaidi;_ he had allowed no others in. He pushes the cup of tea into her hands. It burns, and the smell reminds her of rotting leaves behind their house once upon a time.

Gyda remembers her brothers, Aslaug’s voice, the fire that would come, and gulps down the tea.

Then she takes the drum and starts to play.

xxx

A fish blinks at her in the darkness. Fishes don’t blink but this one does and it emits swirls of colours as it does so.

“Hi,” says Gyda. “I’m Gyda, are you my fish?” She giggles, and the giggles come out as colours that spread, until she is no longer standing in nothingness but by a small river in a forest where the trees are as wide as houses and reach so high that Gyda can barely see their tops. The colours around them are so bright that they hurt Gyda’s eyes and she squeezes them into slits as she peers at the sparkling fish floating above the river.

“I’m your guardian,” the fish agrees. Its mouth moves as it speaks.

“Thank you,” Gyda says. “Do you know where my bird is?”

The fish nods. “You must travel out of the forest in your boat and she will find you.”

Gyda nods back thoughtfully and steps forward over the bank of the river onto the boat that may or may not have been there all the time. It’s a small boat, painted red, and its outlines are a bit wobbly, like drawn by an unsteady hand. They feel rough under Gyda’s curious fingers.

The boat starts moving forwards, swaying gently, and Gyda waves at the fish over her shoulder and the fish waves back. In the air behind in, for a shortest moment, Gyda thinks she can see herself, sleeping curled around her drum.

Sometimes she imagines she can see shapes moving in the woods, but she can never make out their exact forms, just a shadow or a single detail that refuses to become a whole. It gives her headache, but a small feeling of dread that has crept up her spine refuses to let her look away from the trees. The original brightness seems to fade as her mind clears and sharpens, and the forest is taken over by deep shadows and rising mist, sneaking its tentacle-like arms further and further around the tree trunks.

She hums quietly to herself and wraps her fingers around the hilt of a knife that had waited for her at the bottom of the boat.

As the woods end, twisting down and away, giving way to empty tundra, a raven flies down to the prow of her boat and greets her: “Hello, witch.”

Her voice doesn’t sound like the sharp caw of a raven, but rather the sweet song of a nightingale.

Gyda doesn’t say she is not a witch; it might be a lie now, and one should know better than to lie to spirits that see through the faint shroud of words.

“Are you my guide?” she asks simply.

“Yes, witch. But for now the boat will take us.”

Across the plains, in the far distance, she sees villages with smoke rising from them. Numerous birds cross the sky above; there are flocks of small birds, but some look to be the size of horses, and thunder and storms live under their wings.

One such a bird flies closer to the ground and Gyda can see the shadow of a man inside it, terrifying speck of power.

“Is that a _noaidi_?” Gyda asks quietly.

The raven cocks its head. “A powerful witch can take the form of their guardian spirits. Not you, not yet, little witch. But often you don’t need to, you can just send your spirits to do your will. Look, there.”  The raven gestures with her wing, and Gyda looks to the top of a hill where two huge reindeer bulls are charging against each other. “That, little witch, a fight to death. Each witch sends their _passevare sarve_ to fight. The strength of the spirit depends on the strength of the witch, and so in the end the stronger spirit will kill the weaker and so will also the weaker witch die with their spirit.”

Gyda brings her knee up and rests her chin on top of it. “I’m not sure I want to be a witch,” she murmurs.

The raven laughs. “You’re not nearly important enough for someone to want to fight you to death.” Then she shakes her wings, all the colours of rainbow momentarily reflecting off her feathers. “But that’s not all you mean, I see. But you _are_ a witch, there’s no wanting involved.”

“Destiny,” Gyda says thoughtfully.

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

xxx

They sail what must be dozen miles, past plains, hills, and fjells, small, twisted trees and herds of reindeer, but the sky above them doesn’t change, no sun rises and no stars appear. Eventually, it starts snowing lightly, few small snowflakes dancing around in the air, and further still the ground is completely covered in snow. First, ice starts creeping along the river edges, but it sneaks its way in until the boat comes to a stop.

The raven shakes herself and takes flight. “Easy part is over,” she sing-songs.

Gyda feels neither cold nor wet as she scrambles up the riverbank, bare hands deep in the snow.

_I am not really here._

A singe tree stands by the river and against it rest a pair of skis and a bow, and the raven sits on the branch above them, waiting.

xxx

The skis glide over the snowy fields as easy as breathing – as easy as Gyda remembers breathing being, for she has realised there’s no air in her lungs now.

xxx

“This is her mountain,” the raven says from her shoulder. “She is up there, the one you need.”

Gyda looks up the snow covered side of the fjell. The trees, barely her height, have been completely covered in snow, turning into snowy statues. She can see a fox staring down at her, a snow chicken diving into a pile of snow and a white owl taking flight. Its hooting echoes off the cliffs and nooks, falls down and rises up stretching over the whole fjell as a chorus.

Hesitantly Gyda pushes her skis over the invisible border she knows is there. She feels the tingle of magic against hers, resisting, warning, and then she is through. The raven at her shoulder digs her claws tightly into Gyda’s skin, but she feels no pain.

She wishes Thyri was there to hold her hand. Or Björn. Or her mother. She misses them and their strength.

But she is Gyda, the daughter of Ragnar Lothbrok and the shieldmaiden Lagertha, sister of Björn Ironside, Ubbe, Hvitserk, Sigurd and Ivar. Chosen of Thyri. She is Gyda the Witch, who has seen ashes and blood since she could remember, and she refuses to be cowed by a mountain. She squares her shoulders and pushes on.

It takes her a long time to reach the summit, so long that she wonders if she has been trapped in some kind of spell that will force her to travel forever and forever, never reaching anything. But she arrives.

At the top there’s a stone as high as the great hall in Kattegat. It balances on a sharp peak, completely impossibly staying there when it should have never been there in the first place. The power living inside it scorches hotter than a smith’s fire.

As Gyda stares the power vibrates and concentrates, drawing inwards and taking shape. Then, out of the stone steps a woman. Her hair is white but her face is young, younger than Gyda’s, and she is dressed in the same colourful dress the Sámi wear in their celebrations, but her feet are bare. The wind that doesn’t seem to touch Gyda makes her hair swirl lazily around.

They stare at each other, Gyda and the spirit, across endless years. She had been a witch once, Gyda realises, she sees her spells, physical magic the like that had not existed in the world for centuries – she sees her to banish a plague from her village, change into a wolf to speed across distances and to lift her hands towards the sky, singing, screaming, the ocean rising with her – “Enough!” the spirit says and wipes Gyda’s vision away with a wave of her hand, so abruptly that the whole world tilts around her, leaving her nauseous.

“I didn’t bring you here to see.”

“Bring me?” Gyda asks, though she thinks she might understand.

“I spoke to the seeress, the völvas, the _noaidi_ , showed them the fire, and told them to send you. You’re not the only one who can stop it, but you’re the most suitable.”

Gyda can’t imagine what makes her most suitable for the spirit’s purposes, but she doesn’t ask. They both want to stop the fire, and for now that is enough for Gyda.

“Aslaug called me a dragonslayer, but the völva said it would be a lie.”

The spirit smiles, lips tight. “And so it will be. You will not kill him. Once, this poor, foolish man tried to steal from the gods – your gods – and they cursed him into the form of a dragon, as they are so fond of doing. But not even a god can change the form of a man on a whim. Instead, they bound him into a dragon spirit, and forced his form upon him, trapping two souls into one body. Long they slumbered, keeping the madness that such act brings at bay, but now they are waking, and the curse is not lifted. They will burn cities to ground before a hero comes and slays them, and I neither want the cities burned or either of them slain.” She looks straight through Gyda as she says, “I want you to break the curse.”

Gyda exhales shakily though her false lungs hold no air. “I see,” she says. “How?”

The spirit points at the arrow in Gyda’s hand. “That arrow is the same as you have in the physical world. I will become that arrow, and in that arrow I will have a physical form and an anchor in the physical world. You will use me to shoot the dragon, and I can break the curse. As simple as that.” Her voice is dry.

“As simple as that,” Gyda echoes. The raven at her shoulder ruffles her feathers.

Gyda doesn’t see her move, but in one moment the spirit is far, the next she is standing so close to Gyda that their noses are almost touching.

“Swear it,” the spirit says, and her eyes are black as coal.

Gyda swallows. She doesn’t think she has any choice. “I swear.”

The spirit wraps her fingers around the arrow in Gyda’s hand and blinks out of existence. The arrow blazes in Gyda’s hand, bright as the sun.

xxx

On her way back she can see heads turning and following her, eyes curiously and greedily, sometimes warily drawn to the power she is holding in her hands. But none of them approach or attack, and she finds the fish guarding the path to her body.

“Thank you,” she says to spirits, and steps through, clutching the arrow like a lifeline.

xxx

She throws up for two days after she returns while Thyri holds her hair.

xxx

“I have been wondering,” Thyri says as their set off towards the south, “why did the gods send you here if they were the ones to set this curse in the first place?”

Gyda has wondered the same. “I’m not sure gods had anything to do with my journey. I think it was all her.” So much for divine blessing that seems to belong to her father alone extending to her, but in the end, she supposes they’re all simply pieces of a larger play, acting out their roles. It’s no reason to be bitter.

“Then would they not lift the curse, surely knowing what is to come?” She sighs. “I know better than to ask. What is a mortal life to a god?”

A sharp gust of wind rises, biting into their bones. “Trust in the gods,” Gyda says, echoing the words her mother had once told her. “Death is not something to be afraid of.”

Thyri reaches for her hand, the grip clumsy through the leather mittens. “For Valhalla, then.”

xxx

In Gyda’s dreams the road they must take glows, and the spirit stands behind her shoulder, waiting, but awake she finds it hard to trace her dream paths.

“We have been here before,” Thyri says, giving her a look that Gyda doesn’t appreciate.

“I’m trying,” she snaps. She can feel the burn of the arrow she is carrying weighing her down.

There’s a moment of silence as they stand still and Gyda tries to slot dream landscape into the land of living that is the same and yet isn’t. “I know,” Thyri says after a moment. “I’m sorry I’m not any help.”

“You’re with me,” Gyda says, annoyance fading.

The silence is a little less strained after that.

xxx

 _Why me?_ Gyda asks. In her dream, for that’s what it is, she is back standing on top of the spirit’s mountain.

Gyda knows she is standing behind her, even though she is unable to turn to look.

_Because you were the most suitable._

xxx

The forest has receded, lessened to a few small trees and shrubs growing amidst the rock. A path, or half a one, twists through the mountainside, leading them in deeper and deeper into the heights where giants still sometimes traverse.

Gyda stops, looks back to the forest that seems naked, stripped of almost all its colour by the frost that has started to creep up at night. The arrow at her back feels like it’s on fire.

“Last chance to turn back, I think,” she says to Thyri who is now few paces ahead of her.

Thyri doesn’t stop, just glances over her shoulder quickly. “We aren’t turning back.”

Gyda sighs, remembers a little girl on a farm, enamoured by yellow butterflies, and steps forwards.

“I suppose not. We are almost there anyway.” She is not sure what “almost there” means exactly, but she knows they’re close, and as the day wears on she starts sensing something unsettling ahead; and when she closes her eyes she can see the shape of a dragon, burning into wakefulness and madness as the two spirits start slowly gnawing at each other.

xxx

They climb over a ridge and there it is, a large cave entrance in a sheltered nook, with the heat radiating out having melted the frost around it. Gyda wonders how the beast – or perhaps he was still a man then – ended up here of all places once upon a time, when this legend started.

_A legend. Will we be legends too, or just two foolish girls who disappeared into the woods, never to be seen again?_

Thyri is holding her axe and Gyda takes her bow and tries to set the string, but she finds her hands are shaking too badly. She frowns at them, and very slowly and carefully tightens the string to readiness and draws the arrow from her back.

The frosty ground cracks slowly under Thyri’s feet as she steps towards Gyda. Her eyes are slightly wide and the slight frosting of her breath gives away how quickly it’s being released from her lips.

 _I will not lose you, not to this, not to anything,_ Gyda thinks fiercely and uses her free hand to pull Thyri’s forehead against hers. Thyri’s arm wounds around her waist and for a moment they simply stand in silence, breaths mingling.

Gyda takes a deep breath. “The dragon should still be asleep. We’ll go in, I’ll shoot the arrow and the curse will be broken. Simple.” Her chuckle sounds a bit weak to her own ears.

“Simple,” Thyri echoes.

Gyda wonders if she should try to send Thyri away one last time – is this not Gyda’s destiny after all? But she can’t bear the thought of going alone and she doesn’t really believe that Thyri would go.

In a burst of childishness Gyda brushes their noses together and pulls back, grabbing Thyri’s arm and starting down the small slope.

The journey to the cave is maybe two dozen steps, but just then it’s a small forever – until they’re peering into the darkness that seems impenetrable only few paces away. But the arrow in Gyda’s hands is now blazing brightly with white light, and as they hesitantly step in the darkness creeps back from their path.

 _Almost,_ the spirit whispers in her ear and Gyda draws the arrow, ready to shoot.

The air smells like rotten eggs and the breath of the great beast rumbles around them, bouncing off the walls. At least the rhythm is slow and the sound deep, the ground trembling ever so slightly with every breath. Even the air seems to waver and a sweat starts to gather her brow from the intensifying heat.

The claw is black like the rock surrounding them, and could almost be mistaken by a strange part of the wall if not for the two other equally gleaming claws – Gyda spots her own pale face reflected back at her – followed by a paw covered in scales that look like they could be obsidian.

Gyda takes a deep breath – an eye that shines like lit from inside opens – _Fire!_ says the voice and Gyda knocks the arrow, but the beast is already moving, the whole mountain shakes, and even as she lets the arrow fly she knows she has failed –

She is forcibly knocked off her feet as the dragon rushes past in a burst of violent energy. Her breath leaves her lungs as her back connects with hard rock. _Thyri,_ she thinks, but her gasping mouth refuses to form the words until her lungs fill with air again.

“Gyda!” Thyri is holding the still blazing arrow in her hand, offering it to Gyda, who forces herself to her feet which she can’t really feel. She grasps the arrow and her bow and they share a quick look before sprinting towards the entrance, a bit wobbly, but quite heroic all the same.

In the sky, the dragon is testing its wings, and for a small, insane moment Gyda marvels at how beautiful it is, how effortless its flight and how the light of sun makes the blackness of its scales sparkle. But the shadow it casts as it flies over them is huge and terrifying.

“I’m going to try to draw its attention,” Thyri says. “Don’t miss.”

She doesn’t stay to hear the strangled sound escaping from Gyda’s mouth but takes to run up the ridge they had descended from only moments before.

“I. will. not. miss.” Gyda forces the words out, watches as Thyri shakes her axe defiantly to the skies. Her hair has come partially undone from the braids, and the free strands are picked up by the wind, giving her a strange halo, and sunlight catches the edge of her axe, shining so brightly it’s nearly blinding.

The dragon roars.

Gyda takes aim carefully, pointing the arrow straight into the chest of the shadow becoming larger and larger by each passing heartbeat. It opens its maws, a red ember burning behind the cage of teeth.

The arrow flies, and this time it flies true, striking straight into the chest of the dragon. It screeches, a sound of horrible fury and pain, and veers away. But the light from the arrow spreads between its scales, consuming it like vines made from lighting until nothing remains but fading sparkle of light in the sky.

Gyda falls to her knees.

 _Thank you,_ the spirit’s voice says in Gyda’s ear and for a moments she thinks she can see two figures standing at the edge of her vision, but when she turns to look they’re gone.

It takes Gyda and Thyri a while to scramble the distance separating them, all energy gone from their limbs and bruises suddenly aching, but when they fall down together in a heap of hysterical laughter and nonsense words it takes them even longer to let go. Somewhere in there the words _I love you_ might even be said, but they say them properly, after, in a quiet evening by fire.

xxx

They stumble into the nearest village two nights later exhausted, hungry and every part of their bodies blooming with bruises, and Thyri trades in for a story about a girl who slew the dragon. _This is her,_ she whispers to her hushed audience, _Gyda the Dragonslayer._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished a thing!


End file.
